Stawer
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Progress Sneak Peek - April 19
🕑 Added 2021-04-19 20:21:03 +0000 UTCHello everyone and welcome to a new sneak peek of Lucky Paradox!
This week there will be no renders to show, since all the work has been focused on writing and polishing the story as much as possible.
At the beginning it seemed like a simple task and... Oh boy... Even working 12 hours a day I haven't managed to advance enough this week...
For now all my efforts are focused on make the game story faster so that way it’ll feel more dynamic and that the story has no inconsistencies.
But what does that really mean?
I'll try to explain it in the best possible way.
The mechanics of Lucky Paradox are meant to make the game like a board game. Where each turn is a day and each day is divided into 4 rounds (Morning, Noon, Dusk and Night). The morning is mostly focused on generating money, the night on interactions and the Noon and Dusk are for making progress in the story. Of course, it is a cycle that undergoes small variations, so that the gameplay does not feel too monotonous. However, it has been a process that has been perfected little by little with each update, but that had some flaws that were carried over from the first Lucky Paradox demo.
Something like this xD
Then comes the story, where each character follows a narrative thread divided into what could be decks of cards, to these are added even more cards as we progress with other girls, until when a player meets certain requirements, will draw a card from that deck and advance the story in question. There are two exceptions to this, though, which are Maxy and Sasha. Maxy acts in a more unpredictable and less controlled by the player's actions, something that goes well with her personality. Sasha, on the other hand, could be said to be watching how the chess pieces move and encouraging the player to move them as she sees fit. In the end, all these decks will be mixed and as a result we will have one of the many possible endings (similar to what happens in Fallout New Vegas, but I want to try to go a step further in that concept).
Considering the turns divided into 4 rounds, it caused a certain slowdown in the progress of the story during the beginning, and I consider myself a player rather than a developer, and I don't like something to take longer than it should. Therefore, if we wanted to access Maxy's story with the move to the restaurant, we would need 18 turns (in the best case), which translates into almost three weeks of gameplay.
Considering the decks, in Maxy's story itself, certain variations occur according to some actions, for example: Has Charlotte arrived before her? How much progress have you made with Prim? Is there more trust with Yui? And all this under the watchful eye of Sasha.
It's almost like an organism composed of a bunch of gears and I could say it seems almost magical xD.
The problem is that, in this case, I have to change the small gears at the beginning, since the final gears must distribute all this system (Which translates into narrative) in a correct way.
And to all this must be added hours and hours of testing, as it must not create conflicts with the content that is currently there.
And it is necessary to do that soon, since there is still a lot of story ahead and this, which seems silly at first glance, could lead the game to a future stagnation where the technical management becomes so complex that updates take a long time to come out and could lead the game to an uncertain future.
I believe that as a developer I should be honest, responsible and as transparent as possible about this. Possibly this update will take a week or two longer than planned.
And yes, first of all, I want to apologize, all this was due to my inexperience when I was starting and sometimes for speeding up the production of Lucky Paradox, because I had to work on the updates of the game, work as an engineer in my daily life (A lot of stress) and also study for exams at the university :(
Now I suffer those consequences after all the learning I have acquired during all this time and that I can dedicate more time to this thanks to you.
But back to the point...
This week I finished what is the rewrite of Prim and Maxy. It's been a tough process, but I think it turned out great. Now the story feels much more connected and organic, details are given that weren't there before and there are more wholesome moments in between. More than 15 events between the two have been recreated from scratch. They are totally new, even though the storyline is the same, I think it's worth all the suffering xD
And it is also faster to progress in both stories!
As I was saying, it used to take 3 weeks to access Maxy directly. This felt like an artificial time barrier that, as a player, I think is very annoying. Now you can access her in a third of the time required, plus Maxy's first two events no longer consume a cycle of time, so you'll have more time to get to know Argleton in between.
Not only that, but the basis for the girls' alternate histories has also been created. More of this type of content will be added in the future. Each girl will have three possible paths Story path, Love path and Depravity path.
I have also modified a bit the development of Lucky Paradox. Once version 0.6.5 is finished I want to focus on adding more content to the main girls, which would be focused on these alternative paths and more important interactions between them. I think it's necessary, so that the story doesn't feel so disconnected.
And that's it for today!
As always, I wholeheartedly thank everyone who has helped with the development of this incredible game!
Take care and see you soon with more beautiful news <3
Comments
Aaron Rabold
And I greatly appreciate that. I love the game, girls, world, and story you've created and continue to improve. I look forward to eventually replaying it once it's finished, probably multiple times with the different paths you plan to implement. ^_^
Stawer
It won't be necessary to start over either, I'm doing my best to make the game save compatible <3
Aaron Rabold
As a huge board game fan, I really appreciate the analogy here! ^_^ That's really cool that you continue to improve the structure and story of the earlier parts of the game, but I've grown so attached to my single main playthrough (just see it as being *my* true version or something) that I don't think I'll be starting over until the game is complete and I want to re-play it from the beginning, you know, barring any catastrophic event like losing save compatibility in some update.... And personally, I enjoyed the gameplay loop of this so much that I didn't even notice the arbitrary stretches of time between story triggers! XD
DoctorDiscord
GLORIOUS!
Quinfax
Now I kind of want to see a Lucky Paradox board game.
PhageT4
Excelent! rewriting is a very good idea, I honestly think that everything looks and sounds very good. "Inexpirience" at the start it's normal, so don't feel bad about it, I really think reworking it's the best you could do with that situation. I'm really looking for to see these new changes and new interactions! Thank you for all this naaaaaaisu content! and it's our pleasure to be a bit of help for the development ^^ Take care <3
Stawer
Thank you for your kind words <3
MasterWizard
Love it! I think the rewrite of the story will be good for improvements and getting to stories faster like Maxy. Don’t worry about your inexperience from the beginning as we all start from somewhere. It is always my pleasure to be of help for you. Love you Stawer <3
